


Green Eyed Epiphany

by samchandler1986



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Resolving, Unresolved Sexual Tension, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4677170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor finally takes Clara to see the Tumescent Arrows of the Half Light.<br/>Written for the Whouffaldi Countdown Week… er, 5 I think (I’m a bit behind). Prompt: Green Eyed Epiphany: “I didn’t realise how gone I was over you until I started feeling insanely jealous of that person you’re talking to/flirting with/dancing with/who tried to hit on you”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Eyed Epiphany

“I can’t  _believe_ you’re going to make me say this,” she hisses, quite possibly the angriest she has ever been. The Cloister Bell tolls sonorously; she’s not sure if the TARDIS can feel her white-hot rage and believes him to be in serious danger, or if she’s trying to stop their row with a fabricated distraction. In either case she ignores her. “You,” she snarls, “are my  _friend_ . You are not my  _keeper._ ”

“I never said I was!” she shouts back, ignoring her finger jabbing at his chest. “I was just trying−”

“To _what_?” she explodes. “Because I’m having a hard time thinking of any other word for it than−than−” Her nerve cracks unexpectedly in the face of his raised eyebrows. Some things cannot be unsaid, after all.

“Than _what?_ ” he growls, and her temper flares again in the face of his challenge.

“Thanjealousy,” she says quietly.

“Well,” he scoffs, “That’s just ridiculous. Patently ludicrous. What would I have to be jealous about?”

“You _know_ what,” she says, still soft. “If you weren’t jealous then what were you just ‘trying’ exactly? Tell me. Go on, I’m all ears.”

He opens and closes his mouth a few times. “Well, I mean I was…”

“Hmmm?”

He writhes in awkwardness for a few more moments under her ferocious stare. “He didn’t seem very nice,” he eventually offers.

“Nice,” she says, strangely tinny, as if her voice is coming from a long way away.

“Nice,” he repeats. “You know… suitable.”

“Suitable for _what_ exactly?”

There is a red flush in his cheeks that she has never seen before. “Your human… things. You know.” He wriggles his fingers in a gesture that could not be _more_ inappropriate for the subject. Every word appears to be being dragged up from a deep well of disgust. “Human… mating… rituals.”

“Sex, Doctor. You can say the word.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Yes, that is what I want to call it, because that’s what it is. You didn’t want me to have sex with him. Is that it? You were ‘just trying’ to stop me from having any sex. Ever. Again. With anyone.”

“No, no, no,” he says, more high pitched than before. “That’s not what I−”

“You,” she interrupts, not able to stand any more of his ridiculous excuses, “are not. To interfere. In my ‘human things’. _Ever_. Again.” She punctuates every word with a fierce jab of her finger into his chest for good measure, and then turns on her heel and storms out of the console room.

* * *

He takes her to a watch the 2072 finale of the  _Great Galactic Bake Off_ as an apology. It’s a rather presumptuous title, he argues, as humanity has still only managed to colonise Mars at this point in its history. Still, a little Earth girl manages to overcome her crippling shyness and win with her mom’s old soufflé recipe, which goes down well. She knows it’s as close as an apology as he can manage, and after a few days of stiffly formal awkwardness they forget their row (or at least forget to mention it).

Until the day they go to see the Tumescent Arrows of the Half Light.

* * *

It’s been a long standing offer, of course, one she’s turned down in favour of Sherwood Forest, a day out in Edo Period Japan, a trip to the 42 nd century amusement park on Saturn’s Titan, and the opening ceremony of Blackpool’s North Pier in 1863. His unusual persistence in offering it makes her think they must really be worth seeing. 

She has misgivings from the moment they open the TARDIS doors to a greeting by three scantily clad Arrows, who positively _writhe_ with excitement at seeing the Doctor again. They are alien, certainly. Clara resists trying to code them as male or female, despite the Doctor’s reference to them as ‘girls’, but there _is_ something of a shared aesthetic between their species and humans. They run the gamut of voluptuous to androgynous figures; but all beautiful – no more than that − _sensual_ to the last. They are sweet and kind, politely interested in her stories of Earth and other planets she has visited. But it is clear her appeal is dwarfed by that of the Doctor, a rock star amongst adoring fans.

“Why are they so mad about you?” she manages, as they take ceremonial bowls to the fountain and partake in the Waters of the Half Light.

“Oh, saved their planet once,” he says, and she’s not sure if he’s joking or not. “You know how it is.”

Half an hour later she is feeling decidedly woozy. The Waters of the Half Light have an effect not dissimilar to the quadruple hyper-vodka she once made the mistake of downing at a 51st century diplomatic function they attended together.  Unlike the Jeluvian Ambassador’s Ball, however, this time the Doctor seems to share the effects. If anything, she thinks, squinting at him with his head in the lap of the tallest Arrow, he seems to be even _more_ hazy than she is.

He giggles, confirming her suspicion, and suddenly the Arrows are not human shaped at all, but kaleidoscopic puddles of light and sound, whirling around her.

She is heartily sick.

* * *

They are very kind, one of the tall and broad ones reforming a humanoid shape and escorting her back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor will return to you shortly, xe says, and she goes for a bit of a lie down to wait his return, which turns into an eight hour nap. She knows this, because she has installed an old fashioned radio alarm clock in her bedroom on the TARDIS, to help keep some kind of track of time as she experiences it.

He still isn’t back, which rankles a little, but she supposes the TARDIS would tell him if she was _really_ sick. And he has been looking forward to this trip for a while. She goes to the library, eats some dinner (her stomach still a little unsettled); goes for a swim.

Sixteen hours. He is still not returned. It is fair to say she is livid. She debates storming out of the TARDIS to find out just what the _hell_ he is doing, but something stays her hand. Something in the sympathetic kindness of those inhumanly beautiful faces; she can’t quite bear their _pity_. Eighteen hours. She takes her books to bed, eventually falling into fitful sleep, only to wake and find he is still outside.

She contemplates taking the TARDIS, she really does. If it’s this bloody good maybe he’ll _enjoy_ being stuck here while she goes and has a few adventures of her own. Maybe back to that planet with the young Han Solo type at the bar, who was all for showing her his pistol _wink wink_ before the Doctor gate-crashed their proto-date and set off the biggest row they’ve ever had.

Correction, she thinks, biggest row we’ve ever had _until now_.

Twenty six hours later he swaggers back into the console room positively giddy. “Clara,” he says jubilantly, as she turns hollow-eyed in the leather chair of the console room to face him. “I’m sorry you were sick. You missed an amazing spectacle. Hereen has definitely cracked fracturing the sixteenth level. I’ll get you some anti-emetics for next time…”

She is past rage, she thinks, she is sculling about in some calm pool on the far side of the waterfall of anger. “I think I’ll give it a miss, to be honest,” she says.

He gives her an odd look, surprised at her curiously deadened tones. “If you say so. Ah!” He is flicking buttons and switches with what can only be described as a new vigour, the kind that normally only follows saving a planet from smoking ruin. “We’ve picked up a distress call from the crew carrier _John Lennon_ , only a couple of systems away. What do you say? Shall we go and save the day?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, sending them spinning into the time vortex with an enthusiastic flip of the time rotor. 

“I don’t really feel like it,” she says coldly.

He frowns properly now. “Not like you, Clara,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she hisses, “You leave me here for _twenty-six_ hours while you cavort with bloody Tumescent Arrows and you have the audacity to ask me _what’s wrong_?”

“Clara,” he says, making the fatal mistake of trying to laugh, “it’s not like that! It’s not… you know. Human things.”

“Really? Because that’s _exactly_ what it looks like to me, Doctor.”

His face is clouding now, his anger returning to match hers. “It’s much more cerebral,” he snaps, “Don’t sully−”

 “Don’t sully! Is that what you think of us, Doctor? You sticking your head in the lap of some trans-dimensional sex deity is ‘cerebral’, but me having a drink in a bar with an actual human man is – what, all a bit too _animalistic_ for you?”

“I never said that” he retorts. “Now you’re putting words in my mouth.” He drums his fingers on the console for a moment. “I can’t help but feel,” he says, “that you’re applying a double standard here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I believe I am expressly forbidden from meddling in your _human things_.” He pokes her sharply in the arm to punctuate the point, just as she did during their initial row. “So I’d appreciate the same courtesy in return.”

She grabs hold of his jabbing finger while she considers his suggestion, mouth a stony line. “Fine,” she says, “As long as you admit that means what _you_ just did was the equivalent of me having sex for twenty six hours.”

His eyes bulge a little. Even she feels a bit horrified at the thought. “No,” he manages, oddly high pitched again. “Clara, I’m sorry. But it really wasn’t… Please don’t.”

“I won’t,” she says, too quickly. “I mean, I don’t think I _could_. Physically, I mean.” This isn’t quite what she wants to say either. She closes her mouth and thinks for a moment. “Doctor, I’m sorry too. You know what? I was a bit jealous. You’re my best friend and I don’t often have to share you, and when you disappear like that… when I can’t join in, it’s hard.”

“Yeah,” he says, a little ragged, always too proud to fully admit his wrongs. “Me too, I suppose.”

And she ignores the little voice in her head that suggests _best friends_ might be too twee a term for those sent into feather-spitting jealousy at the thought of having to share each other with anyone else.

* * *

The celebrations on this planet are  _particularly_ jubilant, having overthrown the Tyrant of Kombasa. Even the Doctor is sweating when she finds him again on the edge of the circle of dancers. Her legs are aching from all the kicking, but she is prepared to go for another round. She suspects the number of dances she has shared with Kialambra, the rebel lieutenant they have been working with for weeks, has surpassed what is strictly appropriate. He is tall, with dark tousled hair; an archaeologist before the war broke out. He possesses all the rogueish charm of a young Indiana Jones. Maybe she has a type after all, she thinks.

“So,” he says, “Kialambra, hey?”

“Yeah,” she says, swallowing a strange lump in her throat. “I mean, not if you’re-”

“No, it’s okay,” he says, too quickly. “No meddling. In fact I might−” He looks away into the darkness at the edge of the dancing for a moment. “I might go away for a little while somewhere myself, though,” he says.

_The Arrows_ , she thinks glumly. “If that’s what you want.”

They teeter on the edge of this miserable goodbye for a long moment. They both know what comes next is a storming off to their respective distractions, the appeal of which is somewhat soured. Keyasha, young demolitions expert and grateful survivor of the rebellion rather ruins their moment of supreme stupidity, however, by taking them both in hand and leading the back into the dance. They bounce and kick either side of her, until Kialambra takes her aside for a twirl. Their hands meet, as the rhythm changes and the dancers all around them are suddenly paired.

“Bit intense,” Clara manages, standing on tiptoe to shout in his ear.

“Yeah,” he agrees, bending to reply, “I should probably…”

But quite what he should probably do is never ascertained. He trails off, his face now far too close to hers, and God damn it she wants to kiss _somebody_ tonight, and it may as well be him.

He meets her lips tentatively at first, almost chaste. “I bet you weren’t this virtuous for the Arrows,” she says, grinning up at him.

“Shut up,” he replies, and captures her mouth with such ferocity she is too breathless to retort again. “I never kissed any Arrows.”

He pulls her to the edge of the dancing when they break apart again, something clearly weighing on his mind. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, and she follows him a little way away from the celebrations, to near where the TARDIS is parked. “I’ve had an idea, that’s all.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s about sharing,” he says vaguely, “And joining in.”

“Ye-es?”

“Let’s not,” he pleads. “Have to share, I mean. You get jealous, I get jealous…” he waves a hand, “it would just make more sense if we… didn’t…” That strange flush is back in his cheeks again.

“Doctor,” she says, “Are you asking if I would like to have sex with you?”

He stops flapping. “I suppose I am really, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Yes, I am or yes−?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she repeats, and pulls him inside the TARDIS.


End file.
